The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Meanwhile, thanks to your efforts in locating transport, we have the artillery partly resupplied. Let’s see what we can do with what we’ve got.”

* * *

Three hours later they looked up from the maps. “That’s it, then,” Falkenberg said.

“Yes.” Glenda Ruth looked over the troop dispositions. “Those forward patrols are the key to it all,” she said carefully.

“Of course.” He reached into his kit bag. “Have a drink?”

“Now?” But why not? “Thank you, I will.” He poured two mess cups partly full of whiskey and handed her one. “I can’t stay long, though,” she said.

He shrugged and raised the glass. “A willing foe. But not too willing,” he said.

She hesitated a moment, then drank. “It’s a game to you, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. And to you?”

“I hate it. I hate all of it. I didn’t want to start the rebellion again.” She shuddered. “I’ve had enough of killing and crippled men and burned farms—”

“Then why are you here?” he asked. There was no mockery in his voice—and no contempt. The question was genuine.

“My friends asked me to lead them, and I couldn’t let them down.”

“A good reason,” Falkenberg said.

“Thank you.” She drained the cup. “I’ve got to go now. I have to get into my battle armor.”

“That seems reasonable, although the bunkers are well built.”

“I won’t be in a bunker, Colonel. I’m going on patrol with my ranchers.”

Falkenberg regarded her critically. “I wouldn’t think that wise, Miss Horton. Personal courage in a commanding officer is an admirable trait, but—”

“I know.” She smiled softly. “But it needn’t be demonstrated because it is assumed, right? Not with us. I can’t order the ranchers, and I don’t have years of tradition to keep them—that’s the reason for all the ceremonials, isn’t it?” she asked in surprise.

Falkenberg ignored the question. “The point is, the men follow you. I doubt they’d fight as hard for me if you’re killed.”

“Irrelevant, Colonel. Believe me, I don’t want to take this patrol out, but if I don’t take the first one, there may never be another. We’re not used to holding lines, and it’s taking some doing to keep my troops steady.”

“And so you have to shame them into going out.”

She shrugged. “If I go, they will.”

“I’ll lend you a Centurion and some headquarters guards.”

“No. Send the same troops with me that you’ll send with any other Patriot force.” She swayed for a moment. Lack of sleep and the whiskey and the knot of fear in her guts combined for a moment. She held the edge of the desk for a second while Falkenberg looked at her.

“Oh damn,” she said. Then she smiled slightly. “John Christian Falkenberg, don’t you see why it has to be this way?”

He nodded. “I don’t have to like it. All right, get your final briefing from the sergeant major in thirty-five minutes. Good luck, Miss Horton.”

“Thank you.” She hesitated but there was nothing more to say.

* * *

The patrol moved silently through low scrub brush. Something fluttered past her face; a flying squirrel, she thought. There were a lot of gliding creatures on New Washington.

The low hill smelled of toluenes from the shells and mortars that had fallen there in the last battle. The night was pitch dark, with only Franklin’s dull red loom at the far western horizon, so faint that it was sensed, not seen. Another flying fox chittered past, darting after insects and screeching into the night.

A dozen ranchers followed in single file. Behind them came a communications maniple from the Forty-second’s band. Glenda wondered what they did with their instruments when they went onto combat duty, and wished she’d asked. The last man on the trail was a Sergeant Hruska, who’d been sent along by Sergeant Major Calvin at the last minute. Glenda Ruth had been glad to see him, although she felt guilty about having him along.

And that’s silly, she told herself. Men think that way. I don’t have to. I’m not trying to prove anything.

The ranchers carried rifles. Three of Falkenberg’s men did also. The other two had communications gear, and Sergeant Hruska had a submachine gun. It seemed a pitifully small force to contest ground with Covenant Highlanders.

They passed through the final outposts of her nervous ranchers and moved into the valleys between the hills. Glenda Ruth felt completely alone in the silence of the night. She wondered if the others felt it too. Certainly the ranchers did. They were all afraid. What of the mercenaries? she wondered. They weren’t alone, anyway. They were with comrades who shared their meals and their bunkers.

As long as one of Falkenberg’s men was alive, there would be someone to care about those lost. And they do care, she told herself. Sergeant Major Calvin, with his gruff dismissal of casualty reports. “Bah. Another trooper,” he’d said when they told him an old messmate had bought it in the fight with the armor. Men.

She tried to imagine the thoughts of a mercenary soldier, but it was impossible. They were too alien.

Was Falkenberg like the rest of them?

They were nearly a kilometer beyond the lines when she found a narrow gulley two meters deep. It meandered down the hillsides along the approaches to the outposts behind her, and any attacking force assaulting her sector would have to pass it. She motioned the men into the ditch.

Waiting was hardest of all. The ranchers continually moved about, and she had to crawl along the gulley to whisper them into silence. Hours went by, each an agony of waiting. She glanced at her watch to see that no time had elapsed since the last time she’d looked, and resolved not to look again for a full fifteen minutes.

After what seemed fifteen minutes, she waited for what was surely another ten, then looked to see that only eleven minutes had passed altogether. She turned in disgust to stare into the night, blinking against the shapes that formed; shapes that couldn’t be real.

Why do I keep thinking about Falkenberg? And why did I call him by his first name?

The vision of him in her dream still haunted her as well. In the starlit gloom she could almost see the miniature figures again. Falkenberg’s impassive orders rang in her ears. “Kill this one. Send this one to the mines.” He could do that, she thought. He could—

The miniatures were joined by larger figures in battle armor. With a sudden start she knew they were real. Two men stood motionless in the draw below her.

She touched Sergeant Hruska and pointed. The trooper looked carefully and nodded. As they watched, more figures joined the pair of scouts, until soon there were nearly fifty of them in the fold of the hill two hundred meters away. They were too far for her squad’s weapons to have much effect, and a whispered command sent Hruska crawling along the gulley to order the men to stay down and be silent.

The group continued to grow. She couldn’t see them all, and since she could count nearly a hundred she must be observing the assembly area of a full company. Were these the dreaded Highlanders? Memories of her father’s defeat came unwanted, and she brushed them away. They were only hired men—but they fought for glory, and somehow that was enough to make them terrible.

After a long time the enemy began moving toward her.

They formed a V-shape with the point aimed almost directly at her position, and she searched for the ends of the formation. What she saw made her gasp.

Four hundred meters to her left was another company of soldiers in double file. They moved silently and swiftly up the hill, and the lead elements were already far beyond her position. Frantically she looked to the right, focusing the big electronic light-amplifying glasses—and saw another company of men half a kilometer away. A full Highlander Battalion was moving right up her hill in an inverted M, and the group in front of her was the connecting sweep to link the assault columns. In minutes they would be among the ranchers in the defense line.

Still she waited, until the dozen Highlanders of the point were ten meters from her. She shouted commands. “Up and at them! Fire!” From both ends of her ditch the mercenaries’ automatic weapons chattered, then their fire was joined by her riflemen. The point was cut down to a man, and Sergeant Hruska directed fire on the main body, while Glenda Ruth shouted into her communicator.

“Fire Mission. Flash Uncle Four!”

There was a moment’s delay which seemed like years. “Flash Uncle Four.” Another long pause. “On the way,” an unemotional voice answered. She thought it sounded like Falkenberg, but she was too busy to care.

“Reporting,” she said. “At least one battalion of light infantry in assault columns is moving up Hill 905 along ridges Uncle and Zebra.”